to satisfy our cravings for food and raiment; the wounds and bruises the body receives, and which agonise it, and the deformity which so often disfigures it, cramping the spirit within a narrow and iron prison-house—­these form a terrible deduction from that joy which we are capable of deriving even now through the medium of our physical organisation.  Such evils cannot here be rectified.  They are the immediate, or more remote consequences of man’s iniquity; and under Christ belong to that education by which bodily suffering is made the means of disciplining the soul for immortality.  But in the new heavens and the new earth the body will no longer experience fatigue in labour, or be subject to hurtful influences from the elements, nor ever grow old; but be glorious and beautiful as the risen body of Jesus Christ!  “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:  for the former things are passed away.”  I wonder not, indeed, that Paul should exclaim along with those who had the first-fruits of the Spirit, “Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body.”

With these bright hopes let us who are now alive seek to glorify God in the body which is to be glorified together with Christ.  “The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”  “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” “Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost?  If any man defile that temple, him will God destroy.”  “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.  Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.”  Let us honour the body as a holy thing; and beware how we put the chains of slavery upon it, or from our selfishness expose it to hunger and nakedness.  Let us endeavour even to make art, that ministers to our sense of the beautiful, minister also to our sense of the true and good; and ever speak to us of God as seen in His works; or in “His ways among the children of men.”  And finally, as we contemplate the body of a departed saint, let us behold it in the light of this revelation.  Let the grave in which it lies no longer be associated in our thoughts with the worm and corruption only, and with all the sad memorials and revolting symbols of mortality.  Let the voice of Him who is the resurrection and the life be heard in the breeze that bends the grass which waves over it, and His quickening energy be seen in the beauteous sun which shines upon it; and while we hear the cry, “Dust to dust,” let us remember that the “very dust to Him is dear;” and that when He appears in His glory, He will repair and rebuild that ruined temple, and fashion it in glory and in beauty like His own!

II.

OUR INTELLECTUAL LIFE.

Let us consider the joy which God has provided for our intellects during our immortal life in heaven.